Monday, April 23, 2007

Meeting moment of the day

I work in a *very large* publishing company, with offices all over the U.S., as well as international offices. We are undergoing a companywide quality initiative.

Today was the *kickoff* of the initiative, and me and my department coworkers were among the 400 participants listening in via conference call to a meeting that was taking place in a Midwestern city that shall remain nameless. PowerPoints were provided to us via the Web to accompany the highly enthusiastic explanations of "six sigma," "change agents driving the culture," "working smarter, not harder," and so on.

Then a PowerPoint came up with a little animated graphic of a kicking karate guy, and we heard a woman on the conference call shrieking with laughter: "Look at that little karate guy! Ha! Ha! Ha! Jeeeezus! Ha! Ha! Ha! Holy shit!" and so on--we started laughing too.

"Could participants on the conference call please be sure their phones are on mute," the change agent a thousand miles away said, not acknowledging the utter ludicrousness of the tiny karate guy and his determined tiny kicks.

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